Advice - Ring Door Bell

[Empress Judi]

Hi
Our lovely Dad lives with dementia.

We urgently need to buy and install a RingDoorBell type of device.

Dad's extremely vulnerable, has limited capacity and poor mobility. Dad lives alone.

Would anyone be able to advise on what would be best product?

Ideally, both my Sister and me need to be able to receive alerts for all visitors to Dads door and also remotely see and speak to any visitors that turn up at Dads door.

I had a look at Amazon but not sure where to start. There are many devices with varying functionality and price ranges. A user-friendly and low maintenance device is a must.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Judi

 

[MartinWL]

I have recently installed a Ring door bell, happy to answer questions about it. One thing to think about is whether the camera's view includes any neighbours, so as to intrude on their privacy. You can blank out parts of the image to control this but it may restrict what you do want to see. When I first installed it I was getting alerted when the man next door came and went. In my case this is in my own house and it is useful, for talking to parcel couriers etc. If you are operating it remotely I wonder how you will also speak to your dad when someone is at the door. Will you be able to advise him to open the door or not to? You could have a camera inside as well, with loudspeaker and microphone, to see and talk to him, if you want to tell him not to open the door to the suspicious person outside, or to open for the postman. How will your dad cope with this? I think it is a good idea but needs a lot of thought.

 

[Bunpoots]

Welcome to Dementia Talking Point @Empress Judi

We had limited success with a security camera for dad’s front door as he kept turning it off. But having the camera worked as a visual deterrent to the unwelcome visitors who had been turning up regularly before it was installed.

Dad would’ve been confused by a voice coming from nowhere - he already thought I lived with him as I lived close by and often popped in two or three times a day. I only realised he thought we lived together when he started asking where I’d been and I replied “Home” to which he said “You’ve been very quiet!”

I think others have had some success with Ring type systems in the early stages if you type Ring Doorbell into the search box at the top of the page you’ll find some old threads on the subject.

 

[Lynmax]

We used several Ring cameras at Mums house when she still lived there and found them really good. My sister had a different, cheaper doorbell camera but changed it to a Ring one as it was so much better.

We limited the cameras to a fairly narrow visual range to avoid alerts from passing cats or even birds! We paid a monthly fee, not totally necessary, to be able to have additional functions such as save recordings which proved invaluable in reporting a door step scammer to the police. I alerted our neighbours that we had installed them as I used to shout at mum through the camera covering the front drive when she went out to look at cars parked outside - she had a thing about the area in front of her house being her own space and would try door handles or even kick the cars. She coped very well with my voice coming from the camera telling her to leave the car alone and go in the house for a cup of tea! I would then phone her on the house phone to chat for a while to distract her.

I reckon that the Ring system ( doorbell, three security cameras around the outside of the house and two internal cameras) kept mum living alone at home for an extra couple of years.

The thing to consider is how they are installed, we were able to have the three outside cameras hard wired to the electricity but the door bell and two internal cameras had to use batteries due to their locations. These batteries needed replacing fairly frequently so they needed to be accessible - yet out of mums reach!